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GOREIFIED
The Stench Of Putrescent Flesh EP

Self-released (2018)
Rating: 7/10

You’re gonna need the surgical masks and rubber gloves for this one. Welcome to the world of Goreified, a Los Angeles, California quartet of asylum escapees whose previous crimes include ‘Mental Murder’, ‘Sexual Dismemberment’ and ‘Living In Carnage’; all carried out in one ‘Night Of Gore’.

Okay, okay, so that’s just a selection of track titles from this bog standard slab of aural butchery that from the off feels no need to display flights of fancy. Indeed, why buy all new expensive power tools when that rusty hatchet, blunt axe and jagged knife can still do the same job?

This is death metal straight from the boiling summers of the early 90s; Gorguts, Cannibal Corpse, Monstrosity, Autopsy, and everyone and their dog can be heard on this catchy six-track EP. Fuck the frills, forget the technicality, and let’s just munch on the rank guts of this ghastly record and appreciate its traits. There’s some truly crushing dynamics displayed here, particularly with the sick, festering slop of ‘Leftover Carcass’ and the speedier sores showcased on ‘Night Of Gore’.

Seeing the guys adorned in blood-spattered butcher aprons seems rather apt. Brothers Reuben (guitars) and Richard (drums) Guerrero race one another to the morgue in order to meet chief mortician Michael Alvarez, in order for the neck of his bass to be removed from another victim to this record’s punishing sickness. And all under the watchful and twitching eye of vocalist Alexander Velazquez, who had performed previous perverted axe operations for deathsters Insineratehymn.

Velazquez’s tone is very much formulaic by design; his bellows as basic as the watery vomit he’s just coughed up over his latest menu or murder. But it’s all still decomposed death metal that works, and is full to the brim of chunky, horror-filled riffs.

‘Mental Murder’ is a foetid slog of mid-paced nastiness that drips into pacier territory as killer chases potential victim into his damp network of well-constructed torture tunnels, while ‘Sexual Dismemberment’ is your typical galloping gore-fest with the bony bass splintering through the membrane to reach out to the stabbing drums.

Elsewhere, ‘Das Kannibale’ stinks of that early 90s foulness as the rotten guitar work belches up a hideous groove to accompany the bellows. ‘Living In Carnage’ opts for total chaos in its blistering rhythm, meanwhile, although the snappy, yapping vocal intrusions from Apoplexy vocalist Chris Garcia are hardly welcoming, somehow adding a snarl of insanity but also distracting me from the rest of the squelching, burping mass of decay.

When it’s all over, I’m still glad I had the privilege of discovering this partially gnawed and smelly carcass of a record. Goreified are surely a band to keep tabs on if you like generic but grotesque acts of carnage.

Neil Arnold

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